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Unfortunately neither the manual nor the beginners guide actually explain the rules properly, and there isn't enough in-game help to compensate. For instance, there's no way to find out what special buildings you can build on a particular resource until you actually have a city nearby. There's no indication as to what, if any, influence the terrain surrounding a city is. There's no indication as to how much movement a particular tile will take to move across. It'll all be rectified by fans soon enough, but it's still a bit annoying.

More generally, why are video games so desperate to hide their rules from the player, especially in games like strategy and RPGs?

Yeah, in game encyclopedia about tiles is a much needed feature. Also of note to ppl on the edge about buying, is that this game isn't really a genuine 4x. It's a wargame. You've probably read it elsewhere already, but cities only exist to produce and feed armies. As such, I like it much so far. Can't wait for DLC to deepen or broaden it.

After playing for a few hours last night I'm still unsure about some of the features and I'd like a number of options added such as automatic conversion of cities you capture to your race for a more unique race feel but I did have fun with my mighty flying undead armada.

I haven't checked it out myself but the Steam store indicates a manual is available.

Got that and it is useless. It's a basic tutorial with stuff I figured out in 5 minutes myself. There's no annex with what everything does.

edit: found some keyboard shortcuts that aren't documented anywhere.

Originally Posted by jk_bonn on paradox forum

F5 = QuickSave
F9 = Load QuickSave
[ and ] = cycle through units
Alt-R = Open and Close Research
Alt-C = Open and Close Cast Spell
F12 = Takes screenshot (this might be the steam overlay)
H= Turn Hex on and off
G = Guard Mode
E = I think causes a unit to Explore for that turn.

After playing for a few hours last night I'm still unsure about some of the features and I'd like a number of options added such as automatic conversion of cities you capture to your race for a more unique race feel but I did have fun with my mighty flying undead armada.

I know it's hardly an accurate simulation, but how often are conquered cities' populations converted to your own race? India and Africa weren't full of cities composed entirely of Europeans. But I can see how armies will all start looking a bit Benetton ad.

I know it's hardly an accurate simulation, but how often are conquered cities' populations converted to your own race? India and Africa weren't full of cities composed entirely of Europeans. But I can see how armies will all start looking a bit Benetton ad.

Umm yeah, I know where you're coming from but in no way am I playing this game for the realism. As undead especially it'd be nice to pop a nice plague on the population and create a more serene society. Otherwise I was feeling a big lack in the point of the different races as they all turned into the same meta-race after X turns.

Hm, I kind of like it the game throws you in at the deep end, so to speak. It makes you all the more excited when you find some rare ressource or special building ("I wonder what I can do with that?") and rewards experimentation, though I too think a better explanation of at least the basic tech tree for each race would be nice. For example, the way to get Vampires is not very intuitive for Undead. I'm not that annoyed by the fact conquered cities can't be converted either (I like my Trolls + Skeleton Snipers + Catapult army), though the option would of course be nice.

Few hours into game you'll end up John Everyrace. It's not a big issue really, but it does make the race choice a bit pointless. One way to solve it would be to add an option to loot and raze when conquering.

Few hours into game you'll end up John Everyrace. It's not a big issue really, but it does make the race choice a bit pointless. One way to solve it would be to add an option to loot and raze when conquering.

You would need something like MoM had - unrest penalties for mixing races - to motivate players to do that.

I think you can destroy cities, which is probably worth it for small other-race cities you capture, but it's a bit of a faff to bring a settler along with you.

My feeling after playing on the Challenging difficulty is that it's a bit easy, but I guess there is a lot of randomness and I was lucky to get Firestorm really early which is a fantastic spell in early wars.

Even though it seems to weighted towards combat, I would buy this game so hard if it had a multiplayer mode. The devs said they are working on a free multiplayer update - I think I'll wait and see how that turns out before I purchase.

I'm not very impressed with it and it failed my standard test, I played it without reading the manual/guides or anything else and on the default difficulty and I steamrolled everyone without any difficulty.

It is very reminiscent of Civ5 except more 'streamlined' and I don't think that is a good thing.

I haven't tried it on a harder difficulty yet so maybe it will get better but as it is, meh.